So far, our brains and science have taken us a long way from our stone age antecedents and it does indeed seem to be somewhere we want to go. Occasionally, we go camping, but soon scuttle back to urban life when the mosquitoes, cold, wind, hunger and other exigencies remind us of why we chose to go where we went, leaving the natural world as far behind as we could get it.
It is a certainty that women with children who don't suffer and die from genetic problems will be a lot happier than those whose children do suffer.
There are some people who are quite happy that their offspring be deaf, or blind, like them, so that their children fit into their community. But some people consider that a very odd idea. I quite like my offspring to be better than I am. That's the whole point of sexual selection - people aim high.
They don't aim to use the bottom of the gene pool to be symbiotic with their genes.
There have been vast petatrillions of lives ended in suffering and death, in a vast winnowing process, to get us to where we are. Part of that process has included brain development so the process isn't just a sprinkling of random DNA and success for only the tiny number of lucky ones.
It is quite obvious that not only will women choose to do things better, they will succeed in getting where they want to go. Those who fail will do as has been done for hundreds of millions of years = doom their offspring to be recycled to CO2 to feed those making more intelligent choices.
There are many genetic problems which women will not wish to inflict on their children. Cystic fibrosis for example, and how about haemophilia. They'll be gone. But it's not just a matter of getting rid of dross, there's also the choosing of good genes.
Some genes conflict, because a gene is only optimal if it meets the right conditions. So being tall and skinny is good for hot conditions where being able to reach high fruit is a good thing. But it's not good for catching seals in the arctic where heat loss is a serious matter and there are no tall fruit trees.
But some genes don't conflict, such as having high intelligence. A bigger brain is a part of that, but more important is the design of the brain. I have never found having less intelligence is an advantage. When I do stupid things, or struggle to figure something out, it's very annoying, costly and outright dangerous. If my mother had ticked the high intelligence box, it would have been okay with me.
Not many people wish their children were less intelligent. Nearly all wish they could do better = they spend quite a bit of money trying to help them in their mental development, buying fancy education for them, helping with maths etc.
In the grand plan, it might be irrelevant because Google and other thinking cyberspace is taking over from us. We'll be left behind like chimps in the African jungle. DNA is for wet chemistry species.
But meanwhile, getting rid of dross and choosing better DNA is a very good thing to do. Those imbued with religious dogma just KNOW it's bad and don't need to consider those things. They are like Ted Kaczynski, Amish and the Luddites.
As you say, women are already making the choices. Giving them the means to make those choices more intelligent would be a good thing. When women are told by doctors, "Sorry, but your little darling is in deep trouble and is going to die suffering in a few years,but at least it'll cost you a LOT of money to get them to last that long", I suspect they don't go out thinking "Oh joy, this natural process is so fun."
But I'm not a doctor and maybe women doctors see get their kicks out of their babies suffering and having a hard life. Doctors benefit from problems so they are probably opposed to genetic solutions to medical problems, which avoid mothers taking their children to doctors.
Our 2 year old grandson was cut open by doctors, poisoned by anaesthetic, hurt, frightened and psychologically harmed last week. I'd have been happier to have the doctors do something else for a living and have had genetic engineering to avoid the problem in the first place.
Anyone who thinks it a good thing that we went through that, I hope they suffer a long and unhappy demise from a genetic problem, at an early age so they can experience personally what they inflict on others.
Get somewhere we'd like to go? A bike ride in the park and down to Onehunga would have been more fun than under the knife: <Not arguing that government should keep this information from people, just suggesting that it really won't get us anywhere. At least anywhere we really want to go. >
Where we want to go is where we choose to go, not where idiot DNA takes us against our will.
Mqurice |
